In 1956 Gertrude Rae produced a posthumous plaster bust, John Rae who, as a former commissioner for railways and chairman of the tender board for public works, had a distinguished career as a public servant in Sydney during the 19th century. In his spare time, he penned poetry, including a semi-comic poem about the refusal of residents of Lyon's terrace, one of Sydney's grandest residential addresses at the time, to attend the first mayoral fancy dress ball given by J R Wilshire at the Victoria Theatre in 1844:

Loud laughed with scorn, at these vagaries
The magnates of a certain terrace;
A terrace which far surpasses
The humbler dwellings of the masses;
A terrace which from ground to attic, is thoroughly aristocratic;
And tenanted by men of rank
(Vide their balance at bank,)
All pure merinos, trained to keep
Their distance from your coarse wooled sheep.

(Image: Plaster bust of John Rae (1813-1900) by Gertrude Rae, 1956 STHC 89-090)